At Home in Hespeler

I couldn’t agree more about keeping Elizabeth May out of the leadership debate. She is the leader of a fringe party that has no chance of forming the government, or for that matter becoming the opposition. But under that criteria neither should two other people be at that debate.

Jack Layton heads a perennial 3rd, sometimes 4th place party. But even though Jack Layton thinks he’s running for Stephen Harper’s job, the amount of energy required to keep up that particular delusion would potentially bankrupt the NDP under Stéphane Dion’s green shift (yes, I just wrote that Jack Layton’s ego causes global warming). I myself have decided to “apply for Stephen Harper’s job,” but that doesn’t mean it is close to being so. Same applies to Jack Layton, he can say he’s running for PM, but cannot be reasonably said to be so. So why should he be allowed to impose his smirk in a debate between the two men who are running for the job?

Gilles Duceppe’s party, le Bloc Québécois, is in the running for exactly zero seats in English Canada, so how is it that Duceppe is in the English Language debate? I’ll leave his usefulness in the French debate to French bloggers, but he serves no useful purpose in the English debate. In fact he often plays the part of class clown in the English debate precisely because he has no possible votes to gain or lose. As such, he doesn’t belong in the debate.

The debate I want to see, the night I will consider sitting down to watch a debate is when the two men who are running for the job of PM, and only those two men, are debating each other. Harper vs. Dion mano a mano.

And that is why Elizabeth May doesn’t belong in the debate. She is just one more person who has no chance to be PM, and she would just be one more person taking screen time from the two men that we really need to hear from.

Debating with Fools, Elizabeth May

I was working, and didn’t watch the Ontario leaders debate. Never one to let a little thing like that stop me from commentating, here’s what I believe will be a fairly accurate transcript of the debate:

Dalton McGuinty. Friends, I am here tonight not to win an election, but to save public education for our children. Because this man [points to John Tory] will kill off public education as sure as only legal handguns will kill off our children. I am here to regulate his plans into bureaucratic oblivion [giggles].

John Tory: That’s false, you are a liar.

DM: I don’t lie. After being elected last time I was forced, through your parties mismanagement, to cede an inconvenient untruth.

JT: Liar. That’s not leadership. We need leadership.

Howard Hampton. Gentlemen.. This is unbecoming. Surely we can all agree to throw gobs of money at public education, university and teachers, and to make kindergarten an all day affair.

DM: That sounds reasonable.

JT: You have had four years to implement all that, what have you been doing. Where has the leadership been on this issue. Why haven’t you told people of your plans. Liar.

HH: So you disagree with those suggestions Mr. Tory.

JT: Oh dear god no! A little right wing for my liking perhaps, but your in the ball park.

DM: I am not a liar, Mr. Tory. I am disingenuous in my honesty, and I wish you would stop calling me a liar.

HH: We need to raise the minimum wage to 10.00 immediately.

DM: $10.25, Mr. Hampton. Poor people need $10.25 to survive, but they don’t need it just yet. Soon as we get these pesky years with a zero in them out of the way.

HH: You have had four years already, now you want another two? Why would you need two years Mr McGuinty?

DD: To give people time to forget I promised it. Last mandate I raised taxes a mere six months after promising not to, and look at the trouble that got me into.

JT: Liar! That’s not leadership!! Speaking of leadership, when I ran a government regulated monopoly, we made tons of cash, and we did it with some of the worst customer service ever seen. It takes real leadership to be profitable in a government regulated monopoly. No sitting on the sidelines watching the first nations peoples burning down your buildings in that game.

DM: And what would you do in Caledonia, Mr. Tory?

JT: I’d accuse the first nations protesters of stealing American satellite signals, and sent the CRTC after them. Nobody can resist a bureaucracy that entrenched.

DM: How would that work?

JT: Are you kidding, they’ll be filling out forms, in triplicate, for years. Liar! Look folks, a common liar [points to DM].

DM: Stop calling me that.

JT: Oh look, your pants are on fire.

DM [looks]

JT: Made you look; only a real liar would look.
Vote for me for honest leadership.

DM: Public education is a right, and it is good. It is good because it’s public, and because it’s an education. Stop this dangerous lunatic from giving that education to 5,000 more kids; stop him in the name of inclusiveness. Vote for me, Dalton McGuinty, all save public education for all kids, except the 5,000 noted earlier.

HH: I’m Howard Hampton. Vote for me and you won’t have to vote for these two.

Dalton Dalton Dalton, Debating with Fools, John 'Red Green' Tory